Documenting the Impact of Widely-Adopted CGIAR Research Innovations

Innovations in agriculture generally have short-term direct effects on productivity, input use, and in-come of adopters, but they can have broader effects as well. Innovations that are widely adopted and remain in use over many years may have much wider-ranging secondary impacts, including effects on the price of the product in question and on production, and prices of substitute or complementary products. Effects may extend to urban as well as rural consumption and nutrition, and to persons living in poverty nationally. Innovations in policy-oriented research may affect such non-economic factors as the balance of decision-making between men and women. This note summarizes a recent effort by the ISPC’s Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) (https://cas.cgiar.org/spia) to build evidence demonstrating how CGIAR research may have affected such longer-term and broader dimensions of life in developing countries. This research was supported by ISPC-SPIA under the grant “Strengthening Impact Assessment in the CGIAR (SIAC) (https://cas.cgiar.org/spia/news/strengthening-impact-assessment-cgiar-siac-2013-2016).

Does Modern Technology Increase Agricultural Productivity? Revisiting the Evidence from Loevinsohn et al.

This technical note re-examines the 214 papers identified by Loevinsohn and colleagues in their 2013 report to the UK Department for International Development (DFID) on the circumstances and conditions under which technology adoption results in increased agricultural productivity. That report produced no clear evidence-based guidance on such circumstances and conditions. Using criteria slightly less restrictive than theirs, the authors of this paper identified 30 of the 214 studies that reported a relationship between technology and agricultural productivity: 21 of the 23 with yield data showed a positive relationship between use of technology and yield, and 2 showed no increase; 24 of 26 examining income showed a positive relationship between technology use and income, and the other 2 showed no increase. This research was supported by ISPC-SPIA under the grant “Strengthening Impact Assessment in the CGIAR (SIAC) (https://cas.cgiar.org/spia/news/strengthening-impact-assessment-cgiar-siac-2013-2016).

Pesticide Use and Fish Harvests in Vietnamese Rice Agroecosystems

Criticisms of the Green Revolution have focused on environmental and human health problems associated with pesticides. Pesticides may also have adverse effects on wild fish and other aquatic animals in rice paddies that supply an additional source of food and income for some farm households and provide natural pest control. We use survey data from the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam to estimate the impact of pesticides on fish harvests from rice fields. The results confirm findings of ecological studies that pesticide use harms fish populations. However, fish harvest losses are small enough that ignoring them is likely economically rational. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.